Are you black with white stripes?

I asked the Zebra,
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with some quiet times?
Or are you quiet with some noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I'll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.

--Zebra Question by Shel Silverstein.

I know I'm a straight-up adult with a BA in Creative Writing, but I've had the same two favorite poems since I was eight years old.  'Jabberwocky'--which I memorized in the fourth grade, won a talent show with in fifth grade, and can still recite now, and 'Zebra Question,' which I had on a Shel Silverstein cassette, and listened to almost every day until my stereo ate the tape.  A few years ago I found the album on cd, and even now I'll listen to Shel perform 'Zebra Question' when I'm feeling a little off..

I don't know if I'm happy with some sad days or sad with some happy days, and it's not a question I'm going to have sorted out anytime soon.  It's been cold here lately, and rainy, and the days are shortening.  It's not a smile-making combo. 

I had to work today before the sun was up, and was finished and home before most people had their coffee, so I walked in the door, put on sweatpants and went back to bed.  When I woke up I had this in my head.  That hasn't happened to me in a while.  Here it is, exactly as it was in my head when I woke up.  The linebreaks were there, too. 

these cold, wet weeks have reminded me
of the leaks in my heart.  I'm chilled through,
trying to bail out the cellar where I keep my hope
dark rainwater a trickle down grey mortar
soaking through the boxes.
I'm under fifty blankets with cold, stiff toes. 
the afternoon as dark as the middle of the night. 
when I drink my tea I mistake lit streetlights for the sun

I dreamed, but I just remember one.  I was walking on a frozen lake with someone I knew in the dream, but don't know in life, and the ice cracked.  We dropped to our bellies and were crawling for shore, but the ice fragmented and I was pulled under the water.  Then my pov shifted to someone walking by the pond, who saw my scarf, the shattered ice, and a shoe in the water.  Then I woke up.

That's all for today.